In his Cannes Film Festival review of Killers of the Flower Moon, Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson called the upcoming project “Scorsese’s most tragic, condemnatory film to date.” The first official trailer for the movie, which premieres this fall, immerses viewers in the darkness to come.
Starring Martin Scorsese stalwarts Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, the movie centers on the murders of members of the oil-rich Osage Nation in 1920s Oklahoma, a series of horrific crimes known as the reign of terror. DiCaprio plays Ernest Burkhart, a World War I veteran working for his uncle, De Niro’s William Hale, who declares of his Native American neighbors, “This wealth should come to us. Their time is over.”
But his murderous pursuit of money and power is complicated by a love story. Ernest falls for a rich Osage woman named Mollie, played by Lily Gladstone. “I was most concerned with imbuing Mollie with my understanding of her through my lens and upbringing,” Gladstone told Vanity Fair. “But also keeping the space open to really let Osage people direct who she was and how she would conduct herself.”
Gladstone, best known for her role in Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women, said it was important to stay grounded in her character, despite the high pedigree of Killers, which is based on the best-selling book of the same name by David Grann and features a screenplay by Eric Roth and Scorsese. “I always kept an eye on where in proximity to telling the story about Mollie Burkhart, how far away do I need to keep my own ego?” she told VF. “Because there is this element of the pop and glamour of being in a film directed by Scorsese starring DiCaprio and De Niro.”
The intimidation of such a screen presence is evident in the trailer as De Niro’s character warns: “Expecting a miracle to make all this go away…you know they don’t happen anymore.”
Killers of the Flower Moon will receive a limited theatrical release in IMAX theaters on October 6, going wide on October 20 before streaming globally on Apple TV+.
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